


come what may

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: AU from the lockdown episode, Depression, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Graphic discussion of depression and suicide, I cried a lot writing this, In which the enduring power of their love is the main theme, M/M, Medical descriptions and terminology, Reunion 3.0, Soft Husbands, Suicide Attempt, protective!aaron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:47:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27245215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: Aaron, on the verge of signing the divorce papers, has accepted his fate and the fate of his and Robert's relationship.Until, that is, he gets a knock on the door with the worst possible news he could ever want to hear.
Relationships: Aaron Dingle/Robert Sugden
Comments: 25
Kudos: 125





	come what may

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been a real labour of love. Drawn from my own experiences of depression and suicidality, I've poured my heart and soul (and many, many tears) into what is essentially a character study of how much Robert and Aaron love each other, no matter what happens and no matter the status of their relationship. It's a love story where the reunion isn't actually the whole point - at least, that's the way I saw it while writing it - and it's the journey and its exploration that is more important. 
> 
> That said, it's not your typical reunion 3.0 fic. It goes into depth on a lot of serious topics, and may not be everyone's cup of tea. Please do heed the warnings as necessary, but know that this is a very personal story where I've tried to be as realistic as possible while still keeping a happy, optimistic ending. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> PS. Aaron never shaved his head during the lockdown in this fic, so he doesn't look like a freshly-laid egg and honestly that's better for all of us.

He stared down at the forms he was meant to sign with a hollowness in his chest, loosening and tightening his grip on the pen in his hand as if mustering the courage to put it to the paper and sign his name,  _ A. Dingle _ . Just looking at the words in front of him punched a hole through his chest. One stroke of the pen, a few quick letters, and he and Robert would be legally separated and no longer husbands.

The thought made him want to be sick.

But he also knew, deep down, that what Robert had written in his letter was true. There  _ was _ no good way for this to end up. The situation was what it was, it was terrible and awful and all the wishing in the world for things to be different wouldn’t make it so. He missed him, so much it felt paralysing sometimes, but after spending time in Scotland with Debbie and his Uncle Zak, and spending the recent weeks cooped up with Cain who was going through his own troubles - it was a bit easier to deal with. It hurt, but not so much he had to reach for the beer cans to numb the pain anymore, or text an anonymous user on a dating website for a fumble in a cheap flat when all he wanted was  _ Robert’s _ body,  _ Robert’s _ mouth,  _ Robert’s _ hands on him in all the places he knew drove Aaron wild, places that no stranger would ever think to touch.

Loving Robert was as easy as breathing. Missing him was like walking on shards of glass. And when those two things came into conflict, nothing else mattered except remembering, as hard as he could, Robert’s last words to him before he’d said goodbye.

_ I love you so much, Aaron. Never forget that _ .

He hadn’t wanted to accept it, at first. But then he’d read the letter, read Robert’s own words on the page in his own hand, tear-stained and smudged in places and almost torn in others, so hard had Robert pressed the pen to the paper, and then he’d understood.

Robert never had, and never would, stop loving him. It had never been about that in the first place. 

And Aaron would never stop loving him, either. 

It wasn’t about lack of love. It was about too much love, too much pain, too many regrets and a sincere apology that things didn’t turn out differently for them when they should have.

Rubbing at his eyes, not wanting to blotch the official letterhead with his tears, he put his pen to the dotted line where his signature was needed. He would never be truly ready, but it was what had to be done.

  * _D..._



There was a sudden staccato rap on the door, loud and insistent, and Aaron cursed under his breath, sniffing hard and wiping at his face as he got out of his chair and went to answer it, ready to have another go at Cain if this was one of his many attempts to ‘bond’ by bringing him a sandwich and coffee and insisting they eat together on his lunch break. It wasn’t that his uncle’s offers were... _ unwelcome _ , but after a lifetime of monosyllabic grunts and too-short hugs by way of showing his feelings, Cain’s new approach to openness was still a little weird. 

He was all ready to make it clear to Cain that this lunch would be a  _ silent _ one when he opened the door to find not his uncle, but DS Wise, looking distinctly uncomfortable and pale in his usual dark coat, under which Aaron noticed he wasn’t wearing the shirt and tie he’d come to associate with the police officer but an ordinary jumper and dark jeans.

So he wasn’t working, then. 

“What d’you want?” Aaron asked, a feeling of resentment towards him rising in his chest. After all, he was the one who had wanted Robert apprehended for murder. He was the one who had arrested him when he’d called the police on himself that day, had put the handcuffs around his wrists and led him away from Aaron forever.

“I think I need to come in, Aaron,” DS Wise replied, his voice quiet and serious. There were deep lines in his face, of worry and stress, and something else Aaron couldn’t place. “May I?”

“S’pose,” Aaron said by way of reply, standing back to let the detective in. “You still haven’t said why you’re here, though. It’s not like we’re friends, you did get my husband arrested for murder then locked him up in prison.”

“Aaron-” DS Wise began, then stopped, pushing a hand down his face, as though trying to compose himself. He looked lost in the vast space of the living room. “I’m here  _ because _ I understand the situation at hand, I thought it would be best if I were the one to let you know rather than another officer who might not be as sympathetic.”

Aaron’s jaw hardened; his heart quicked. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, suddenly clammy. “What d’you mean?”

“Sit down,” Wise said, taking a seat of his own on the arm of the chair opposite the sofa. Aaron did as he was told. He looked up at the mantlepiece, eyes raking over the photographs of Aaron and Robert and Seb, the wedding, Seb splashing in the sink, a photograph of Robert and Seb laughing at something behind the camera, the similarities between father and son so pronounced that Aaron had joked that Robert had secretly cloned himself somehow. 

The lines on Wise’s forehead deepened. “We received correspondence from HMP Rightworth on the Isle of Wight last night. I’m afraid that your husband - that  _ Robert _ \- has made an attempt to take his own life.”

White noise. A buzzing sound, a low steady hum that filled Aaron’s ears and mind and chest until it was all he could hear, all he could sense, as if live wires were being run across his skin and his whole body was blurring at the edges from the vibrations. He wasn’t sitting on the sofa, in his own house, but instead was somewhere else entirely, the bottom having dropped out of the world and Aaron was suspended in it, motionless. 

“No,” he whispered. Then again, louder, but it came out like the moan of a wounded animal in inexpressible pain;  _ “No. _ ”

“I’m so sorry,” DS Wise said. 

But Aaron didn’t hear him, didn’t comprehend his words. He collapsed to his knees, barely registering falling off the sofa onto the carpet, gripping the edge of the coffee table so hard his knuckles turned white and his nails bit into the wood. 

This wasn’t happening.

Not Robert.

Not…. _ this _ .

“How?” Aaron asked, his voice a hoarse groan. His eyes were closed, breathing shallow, trying to focus on the sensation of the soft carpet under his knees, the smooth wood under his palm and fingers. When he didn’t get an answer, the question exploded out of him angrily. “ _ How? _ ”

“He took an overdose of sleeping pills. That’s all they would tell me. Aaron, I’m so sorry-”

“ _ Don’t say you’re sorry! _ ” Aaron yelled, jumping up suddenly, his whole body shaking. “You did this! You arrested him! You’re the one that took him away from me, and if you hadn’t - if  _ I _ hadn’t - Oh God, what if I hadn’t taken him at his word when he said goodbye? What if I’d tried to push harder to get ‘im to talk to me instead of lettin’ him walk away? Why didn’t I notice how scared he was? Why didn’t I try harder to help him?”

The words pushed out of him in a rush; he grabbed in a frenzy at his shorn head, the stubble on his chin, he found an empty glass on the coffee table and grabbed it, throwing it clean across the room till it smashed on the opposite wall near the fridge and the shards clattered to the kitchen floor. Stuck to the fridge with a magnet was a picture from one of those tacky supermarket photo booths, him and Robert and Seb all crammed into the tiny space, all laughing, all smiling.

And then he sank onto the cushions in an avalanche of sobs, his body bending double with the force of it, curling into a ball so small his forehead touched his knees; he cried and cried, mind racing. What if he hadn’t left Robert alone? What if he had seen something that was a warning sign? How could he have missed this - missed that Robert was suffering so much inside his own head, was going through something so unbearable that he couldn’t express,, that his only solution was to leave the world forever?

Robert was so miserable, so alone, that he thought he was better off gone for good and had done something about it.

_ His _ Robert. His husband.

_ My beautiful husband, who I love, wasn’t there anymore. _

The words were like a blinding flash of a memory; years ago, he’d seen Robert scared and vulnerable then, too, as he’d cried that he’d felt so alone when Aaron had shut him out, had wanted to communicate with him but he, Aaron, had retreated and cast off the world. How afraid he’d been that he wasn’t enough - not for Aaron, not for Liv, not for anyone.

Then, too, Aaron had sworn that he was. He was enough. He was Robert, perfectly imperfect, and he was  _ his _ .

“Where’d they take him?” Aaron sobbed, his voice muffled by him pressing his forehead to his knees. “Which hospital?”

“I can’t tell you that, it’s confidential and since he cut off all contact…”

Aaron breathed hard, in through his nose and out through his mouth. “I don’t care. This is an  _ emergency. Which hospital?” _

“I can’t tell you that information-”

“I DON’T CARE!” Aaron roared, standing up once more and facing DS Wise with his fists curled at his sides. He was still crying freely, face red and wet and tears staining the collar of his jumper. “He’s my husband, I love him and he’s - he’s my  _ husband _ !” he yelled again. “He’s sick and maybe dyin’ and - I left him all alone in there, I left him  _ alone _ and  _ you _ arrested him and if you hadn’t stuck your nose in maybe he wouldn’t have tried to top himself!”

“So I’m asking you again,” he said, advancing on DS Wise; the older man visibly flinched backwards from where he sat, Aaron staring him down, tears dripping from his chin but nevertheless resolute in his words. “Which hospital did they take him to?”

“I believe it’s St. Mary’s, affiliated with the prison, it’s where most inmates are taken if they get injured or ill,” Wise said resignedly, knowing that he couldn’t compete with Aaron’s helplessness, his rage and his hurt. “That’s all I know. The hospital won’t release any more information and neither will Rightworth.” 

“That’s good enough for me,” Aaron replied, “I’ll bang down their door until they let me see him, whether I’m allowed contact or not.” He sniffed hard, wiped at his face, pulling the sleeves of his jumper over his hands to hide that they were shaking. His chin wobbled as he spoke his next words. “He needs me. I love ‘im and he needs me.”

Wise bowed his head, as if in shame. “I understand.”

“Go,” Aaron ordered. “I have to get some stuff ready. And then I’m going to see Robert and I’m going to do whatever it takes to help him get through this. We’re a team. We  _ were _ a team. And I - what happened since isn’t important anymore.” He thought of the divorce papers, unsigned, sitting on the kitchen table just a few feet away. Useless documents they were, now. As irrelevant as Robert choosing to cut his family off and distance himself from them all - which, Aaron was coming to realise as he spoke, was as much a cry for help as anything and he didn’t see it.

He didn’t  _ see _ it.

DS Wise rose, dusted down his coat, turned to the door. “For what it’s worth, I hope your husband can get the help he needs. I am truly very sorry that I had to be the one to arrest him.”

_ Yeah, of course you are _ , Aaron thought with sarcasm.  _ Everyone’s always sorry after the worst has already happened _ .

When the door had shut behind him and Aaron was alone again in a too-quiet, too-empty house, he walked slowly, as though treading through treacle, across to the kitchen, where the shattered glass pieces glittered on the floor and the strip of photo booth pictures seemed to mock him with their radiating happiness from the fridge. He took it down and ran it through his fingers, his thumb tracing the photographic image of Robert, smiling so wide the corners of his eyes crinkled up into endearing crow’s feet, Seb’s tiny hand wrapped around one of his fingers while Aaron next to him pressed a kiss to the top of Seb’s fluffy strawberry-blond hair.

Quickly he folded it up and put it for safekeeping into the pocket of his t-shirt beneath his jumper, right over his heart, and some of the shakiness and anger he was feeling subsided. 

Then he turned to the table, where the papers sat, glaring evidence of his mistake in letting Robert isolate himself so much from them, his family, that none of them even thought to question it when he did.

He picked them up, re-reading the printed words and his half-finished signature, then promptly tore them up into as small pieces as he could manage, raining letterheaded confetti onto the table. He scattered the torn scraps with an anguished cry and a slam of his hand, the impact smarting but he didn’t care; he fell forward, leaning against the table as if it were the only thing holding him up, and bowed his head to the polished surface, more tears dripping onto the surface and shining there, blotting the place where Aaron had minutes earlier been close to writing Robert out of his life for good.

“I’m so sorry, Rob,” he gasped, talking only to himself and whatever deity was out there that might help get his message across to his husband. “I’m so sorry I let ya down when I promised ya I never would again.”

Wiping at his face, he righted himself, and reached for his phone. He dialled the familiar number and waited for it to be answered.

“Cain? Yeah, I’m gonna be gone for a bit. I don’t know how long for. It’s - it’s important. Can you keep an eye on things here? The boys can have the run of the house, tell them their fun cousin Aaron said it was fine.” He paused here, his voice thick. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s….you can’t tell anyone, alright? I have to go to the Isle of Wight. Robert’s sick. He needs me. He’s...he’s really unwell, Cain. I have to go. You understand that, right? You know I love ‘im. Thanks.”

He put down the phone, shaking. He had to pack. He had to go - now. 

He had to save his husband.

  
  


\- - - - - - -

  
  


The drive to Southampton was monotonous and slow, and rain had started lashing down almost as soon as he was out of Yorkshire. It made the road slippery and difficult to see, and Aaron was forced to take extra care, meaning that he lost precious time waiting in traffic when he would have rather put his foot down and sped all the way to the south coast, the faster he went meaning that he was that much closer to Robert and to being with him, at his side, the way he was supposed to be before things escalated so badly. 

As he drove, he thought, and the more he thought, the more guilt and fear and worry stirred in his stomach, curling into a hard ball of anxiety and regret that made him feel physically sick. He replayed their last time together over and over in his head, the way Robert had been so distraught when he’d spoken to him, his pleading eyes and shaking hands and how much he had cried onto Aaron’s shoulder as he’d held him impossibly close. He remembered the wobble of his chin, the redness of his cheeks, the way he could barely get the words out that he wanted to say and when he had, they hadn’t made sense. Not to Aaron, not at the time. 

_ You’re the best thing that ever happened to me _ .

_ I love you so, so much _ .

He remembered feeling him shaking against his own body, the way he’d held on like he was Seb and he’d had a bad dream that needed soothing away; he remembered the feel of his lips against his neck, his cheek, the hoarseness of his voice as he’d all but whispered his final words.

_ Bye, Aaron _ .

Did he know, then, that he was falling into a kind of despair he would see no way out of? Did he feel it creeping up on him the way Aaron had often described it creeping up on himself, a black hole that swallowed him up bit by bit until none of him remained above its empty blackness? Had he been falling, succumbing, to that numbness of feeling and sense of having nothing to give to the world of any value and his own sense of insignificance, ever since he had hit Lee with that shovel, believing himself a monster of his own making for ruining his family’s chances at a happy future?

It was too much, too unthinkable; to think of Robert, always so strong and sure in most situations, the pillar on which Aaron had leaned many times when he was feeling at his weakest, himself buried by the weight of his own fears and thoughts. The idea that the man he loved would hate his existence enough to want to die...it took his breath from his chest and chilled him to the bone. He’d never wanted that for Robert. He’d never wanted him to be in that situation. 

That knowledge...that Robert was suffering, unimaginably suffering, was enough to cause Aaron a phantom pain in his own heart and stomach and chest, one that no doubt matched Robert’s own state of mind. 

_ I’m coming _ , he thought, as hard as he could, as if by sheer force of will Robert might hear him.  _ I’m coming for you and everything will be okay _ .

He wasn’t sure whether it was a promise, or something he was trying to convince himself of.

  
  


\- - - - - - -

He had to stop off eventually at a motorway service station, his stomach growling and reminding him he hadn’t eaten since that morning. It was still pouring, and he forced himself to smile and make small talk with the young girl at the checkout as he paid for a steaming coffee and a sandwich, some bottles of water, a packet of crisps for later. He put way too much sugar in the coffee and told himself it was for shock, sipping at the far-too-sweet black stuff as he got back into the car and kept driving. 

It was always Robert who put too much sugar in his coffee, especially if he was working and needed to get important stuff done.

_ “Look at ya, you’re so over-caffeinated you’re practically vibratin’,” _ Aaron would chastise, shaking his head and taking Robert’s empty mug from him, cutting him off.  _ “No more for you, or you won’t sleep tonight _ .”

On the passenger seat next to him was a paper bag that had two jam and cream donuts in, still warm and dusted with sugar.

He had a fantasy that he and Robert might split them between them with a plastic cup of weak hospital tea, a peace offering to make Robert smile as they discussed their future and healed the rift between them, a step forward so that they didn’t have to go back out into the world alone again.

He ate one as the sky was getting dark around him, the rain having finally stopped and the drop in temperature causing him to turn on the heating in the silver Porsche, the seat beneath him growing warm and cradling him from underneath as though by a large, invisible hand. It reminded him of Robert’s strong arms and warm embrace keeping him close at night, pressed together so it was difficult to tell where one of them ended and the other began. It reminded him of wrapping the duvet around them and snoozing the alarm to sleep in, forgetting the responsibilities of the adult world and pretending they were teenagers in first love again.

It had taken a long time for Aaron to be able to sleep in their large, empty bed again. He still wasn’t entirely used to it, and he had often wondered if Robert felt as bereft as he did, confined to a narrow single bed in a six by eight cell with nothing to entertain himself with except painful memories and bad feelings.

\- - - - - - -

Aaron pulled over onto the hard shoulder when he felt his eyes getting gritty and tired, knowing he’d be no good to Robert if he was sleep-deprived - or ended up getting into an accident himself trying to get to him. His body screamed at him to resist, to keep going, but logic triumphed and eventually he forced himself to close his eyes and get a couple of hours’ kip, draining the last of the now-cold coffee. He turned on the radio with the volume on a low hum for background noise, letting the music carry him away into a doze.

He dreamed of him and Robert.

Scenes from the last five years of their tumultuous relationship, the scant year of proper marriage they had had before everything went sideways. He dreamed of having fallen in the woods, pain spreading up his leg from his ankle, freezing air chilling his bones and Robert, Robert being there and finding him, his low voice close to his ear telling him that he would be okay, wrapping his own jacket around Aaron’s shoulders to keep him warm until the ambulance arrived. He dreamed of sweet-smelling cotton sheets and silk pillowcases, stolen kisses in the kitchen at Home Farm, feverish hands and bodies coming together on a blanket stretched out over scratchy bales of hay. His mind threw up memory after memory, Robert at his side during Gordon’s trial, tears in his own eyes, waking up to find a shining silver ring on his finger and saying  _ yes, Robert, yes, I will marry you _ with as much energy as he could lying in a hospital bed. Holding his son for the first time and marvelling at how much the little boy’s round cheeks and startling blue eyes reminded him of his father, and thinking how much he wanted both of them in his life for good. 

They’d been through so much, had overcome all kinds of obstacles that had been thrown at them, not least disapproval from almost everyone in the village at one point or another, and they’d come through it all because they loved each other. They loved each other. And that kind of love didn’t just go away. If anything, in the months since Robert had been sent down, it had only grown stronger within him, perhaps somewhat muted, but still there, still strong all the same. 

Aaron woke crying some hours later, tears streaming down his face as the faint melody of some love song he couldn’t identify played out into the quiet of the car, hugging his arms around his chest and hoping beyond hope there was still a chance for them.

\- - - - - - -

He just made the next ferry crossing from Southampton, hastily shoving the fare into the ticket woman’s hand and jumping right back into his car, driving onto the boat with his stomach turning and his heart in his throat, knowing he was getting closer. His skin seemed to jump with it, a kind of electricity running just under the top layer of skin, a recognition of sorts that he was close to being where Robert was, as if his nerves, his biological functions themselves could sense it. Being close to Robert was always like some kind of gravitational pull, drawing them in towards each other, whether they were waiting in the queue at David’s shop to buy beer and ice cream or sitting on the couch watching a film, hands intertwined, knowing they’d end up falling asleep on top of each other before they reached the end and miss the climax of the action.

When he went to relieve himself in the bathrooms, he caught sight of himself in the mirror above the sink when he went to wash his hands. His hair was wild and curling from the rain, a frizzy cloud around his head above a pale face with red-rimmed, tired-looking eyes and two days’ worth of stubble growth on his cheeks and chin. But there was a set to his jaw that hadn’t been there for months; a look of determination, of passion, of desperation.

Absently, he rubbed the space on his finger where his wedding ring should have been. He hadn’t worn it in months, had been so angry initially that he hadn’t seen the point and simply never put it back on. Should he have brought it - both of them - with him, snatched up the small box hidden in the back of a drawer and presented it to Robert as proof that he was never going to give up on him?

_ Probably wouldn’t be allowed _ , Aaron thought, in the back of his mind.  _ Robert wouldn’t be allowed anything that could be potentially dangerous if he was on watch after trying to kill himself. _

Still, he felt like he should have brought  _ some _ thing, anything to try and help Robert. A photo, an old token from their relationship, something he’d kept of sentimental value that might have meaning for him despite the blackness of his mood and the way he was struggling against his own mind.

He’d have liked something like that when he’d been in hospital for the exact same thing.

In the end, he wandered aimlessly up and down the boat for a while, perusing the shops in the duty free without interest, feeling his heart clench when he passed the row of expensive whiskey bottles, or the men’s cologne. He tried to find the one that smelled like Robert, like home, but they didn’t have it or else he couldn’t recognize it amongst all the other scents and smells around him. After that, he went and sat near the window to watch the undulating waves, up and down, up and down, the sky black and the boat’s lights reflecting in the continually moving surface of the water. 

He missed Robert. He missed him so much it was like having a phantom limb, one that you knew was gone but still felt the aches and pains of every now and then, reminding you of what you used to have. How happy, how carefree, you used to be.

\- - - - - - -

The hospital next to the prison was called St. Mary's; DS Wise had been right. It was small, smaller than Aaron was expecting, and so far as he could see, catered only to the prison inmates themselves. There was a tiny Accident and Emergency department and a single ambulance outside. He was exhausted, his limbs felt like lead, but his heart pounded and he’d never felt more alive as he looked up and down the hospital’s facade, having paid the parking fare with the last of his spare change and was now clenching and unclenching his fists inside the sleeves of his jacket, trying to psych himself up to go inside.

The wind was cold, whipping at his hair and his bare throat, and he wished he’d brought a scarf with him, or at least a bigger coat or a thicker jumper. He was wearing the clothes he’d travelled in, refreshing himself as best he could with cold water and a pack of chewing gum he’d bought before getting off the ferry as he hadn’t brought a toothbrush, or anything else involving making himself look presentable whatsoever. He probably looked a sight, a madman on a mission. 

Inexplicably, he wondered what Cain had told his mum or Paddy about where he’d gone off to so unexpectedly. Hopefully his uncle had spun them some lie about a long-distance scrap run or a conference, anything work-related that would placate them. It wasn’t that he  _ actively _ didn’t want them to know - though given their cold, accusatory attitude towards Robert in the weeks and months since he went inside, he doubted they’d encourage Aaron’s decision with blazing warmth. It was more like it was a private matter, between him and Robert, and at the end of the day it was nobody else’s business what happened between them or what they did. Plus, it wasn’t Aaron’s place to go telling Robert’s business to anyone else, not even Vic or Diane. In much the same way as Robert had kept Aaron’s confidence once, years ago, he was now doing the same for him.

Aaron pulled his jacket tighter around him, and headed for the main entrance of the hospital, passing by a nurse who was smoking at the front of the building. The acrid smell of the cigarette caught him in the back of his throat, reminding him of being seventeen and mad at the world, doing anything he could to block out whatever it was he was feeling. He hated the smell of cigarettes now; he half-wanted to bat it from the nurse’s hand and stamp it out, with a few choice words about how a health professional shouldn’t be lighting up and especially not in full view of anyone who came in or out of the hospital.  _ Robert would have _ , he thought with a small grin to himself, imagining it, his sharp-tongued husband taking the woman to task for her unsafe practices and damage she was doing to her health. 

_ Not your husband, though, is he? _ A snide little voice in his head told him. 

_ Shut up _ , he shot back at it fiercely, pushing it to the back of his mind.  _ Didn’t sign the papers, did I? That counts for something _ .

The reception area was cool and light, a front desk panelled in dark wood manned by several women working at computers, and next to it, a waiting area with plush chairs and benches for people to sit on. There were a few people milling about, a small pharmacy kiosk dispensing medicines to a queue of patients. A woman in an orange jumper was talking to a pale, grey-haired man who, on second glance, Aaron saw was wearing the matching sweatshirt and trousers of a prison uniform, a monitor on his ankle and an IV tube attached to a pole running into his left hand. 

Was that what Robert would look like, when he saw him?

He approached the first woman on the reception desk, a blonde woman with glasses, and tried to swallow past the sudden dryness in his throat. What was he even supposed to say?

“I’m here to see someone,” he eventually said, bracing one hand on the desk in front of him to steady himself. “One of your inmates.” 

“Name?” the woman asked, without looking up from her keyboard. 

“Sugden. Robert Sugden.” He let out a large breath, tapping his foot anxiously as the woman typed a few words and clicked a few buttons. 

“I’m sorry, he’s not allowed visitors,” the woman said. 

Aaron’s stomach dropped. “You what?” 

“Visitors aren’t allowed. It’s for safety reasons, given the nature of his imprisonment and it says here that he declined all contact from anyone months ago,” she explained. “Sorry, it’s the way it is.”

“Rubbish,” Aaron said through gritted teeth. “ _ Rubbish _ . Do you know how long it’s taken me to get here? How far I’ve had to travel? And why is it your concern  _ why _ he’s in prison in the first place, isn’t that some kind of breach of confidentiality or summat?” He didn’t wait for her to respond before continuing. “Robert Sugden is my  _ husband _ . He tried to commit suicide. I  _ want to see him _ .”

“Sir, I’m sorry but you’re not allowed,” the woman repeated again, “it’s against hospital policy, and given he hasn’t given any consent to see visitors I can’t let you go through.”

“This is an  _ emergency _ !” Aaron cried, his fist coming down onto the desk, making the woman jump. “Do you realize that? Do you realize that he could have  _ died _ because he’s so ill he tried to top himself months after going inside? Do you know what that’s  _ like? _ I do, and it is  _ awful _ , and he’s my husband and in this case, I think you can make an exception!”

People were staring now, but Aaron didn’t care. He felt angry, rage boiling in his chest like a fire, sputtering at first and then roaring into flames sky-high like a bonfire. 

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to stop shouting,” the woman said, her remarkable calmness making Aaron feel even angrier. She seemed to be devoid of any empathy at all, and she worked in a hospital! Was this how she treated everyone who came looking for medical help or to visit someone they loved, someone who might be very sick or dying or nearly had died?

“And I think you’re a pretty rubbish receptionist,” Aaron shot back. “Five months ago my husband got sent to prison for murder even though he should never have been charged with it, he was in such a state when he went inside that he tried to  _ divorce _ me and I just  _ let _ him walk away and did nothin’ to ‘elp him. Now he’s here because he’d rather not be alive, so I think you can understand how upset and angry I am. And I want to see him,” Aaron’s voice broke on the last few words, cracking and straining like a sheet of ice under the pressure of a foot. “I need to see him.  _ Please _ . Please, please just let me see him.”

He knew he was begging, his eyes and throat burning as the hand gripping the edge of the desk shook. His left hand, but he didn’t have a wedding ring there anymore.

The woman shook her head.”It’s not allowed, sir.”

“Okay,” Aaron said dejectedly. “Okay. Fine. It’s fine.” He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, sniffing hard. “I get it, you’re just doing your job, even if you’re lettin’ your patients down when you do, it’s fine.” His chin trembled, squeezing his eyes shut firmly to avoid tears spilling out. He didn’t want this unnamed receptionist to see him cry. “I’ll just go back home then.”

He was about to turn on his heel and leave, his whole body vibrating with the kind of sadness he would never be able to express, until a door to his left swung open and a woman with red hair twisted into a chignon in nurse’s scrubs called out to him, “Excuse me, are you here to see Robert Sugden?”

Aaron could have fallen to his knees with gratitude there and then; he rushed over, his hope renewed, tear tracks staining his cheeks. “Yes! Yeah, I am.”

“You must be Aaron,” the nurse said, with a fond recognition that he didn’t quite understand. “Is that correct?”

“Yes,” he said quickly, wiping at his face again, trying to compose himself. He felt shaky and elated all at once. “I’m Robert’s - well, he’s my husband, but he sent me divorce papers. I think that’s only because he’s ill though, I don’t think he meant it.”

The nurse nodded. “I understand. He’s had a fair few difficulties. We had to sedate him once he came out of surgery, he was extremely distressed when he came round. He wasn’t responding coherently. It’s common with suicidal patients, often they don’t respond or are able to do very little given the nature of their illness.”

“But he’s - he’s okay though? Physically?” Aaron asked. 

The nurse nodded again. “As well as he could be. We got the drugs out of his system pretty quickly, but the side effects meant we had to administer fluids and medicinal solutions immediately to stop his organs from shutting down. He’ll be very weak and exhausted for a while during the recovery period.”

_ Oh, Robert _ , was what crossed Aaron’s mind there and then.  _ What have you done to yourself? _

“That’s good,” Aaron forced himself to say. “That’s really good. I’m just glad someone got to him in time, brought him here.”

_ Or things could have been a lot worse _ , his brain supplied for him.

“Would you like to come and see him?” the nurse asked. 

“It’s why I’m here,” Aaron said almost breathlessly, nodding enthusiastically. “I’m here to help him.”

The nurse gave a small smile. “Then please, follow me.”

\- - - - - - -

The corridor she led him to was virtually deserted. His heart beat hard in his chest. He was afraid, both for Robert and for what he might find - afraid that he would be overcome, that he’d back out at the last minute, that he wouldn’t be able to cope, that Robert would be in the kind of state he wouldn’t be able to handle.

After all, he’d been there himself.

But he knew that he had to be strong for him, now, the way he had been for Aaron countless times. 

They reached a room at the end of the corridor, where a prison officer was standing guard outside, armed with a truncheon and Taser pushed through the belt at her waist. She didn’t react when Aaron and the nurse approached. The sight of her made something hard sink into Aaron’s stomach; for a brief moment, he was reliving his own prison experiences, and he thought of what Robert might have experienced too.

The nurse communicated something in a low voice to the guard, who nodded with her face still impassive. 

“You can come in,” she said softly. “Don’t worry about CO Tanner, she’s here to help keep your husband safe while we treat him.”

Aaron made eye contact with the guard - Tanner - who gave him a small nod in what he thought was supposed to be reassurance. But all he could think of was,  _ They’re treating him like a criminal, but he’s a person, too. _

He reached to put his hand on the knob of the door. “I’ll be right outside if you need anything,” the nurse said from behind him. He realized then that he hadn’t even asked for her name, but it didn’t matter now. He’d get it afterwards. After he’d seen Robert.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, but all his concentration was on the inside of that room and he wasn’t paying attention to anything or anyone else. 

And then he stepped inside, and all the breath he held in his chest left it as he laid eyes on his husband for the first time in almost half a year.

He was asleep, impossibly small on the white sheets of the bed, his hair a pale gold halo against the pillows that Aaron ached immediately to stroke, to touch and feel the soft strands beneath his fingers, the way he sometimes did if he woke before him in the mornings. He registered deathly pale skin and sunken cheeks, dark circles like bruises under his eyes; he was so still that, for a moment, Aaron’s heart clenched - he had to stare, hard, at the rise and fall of his chest for a short moment before concluding that he really was breathing. That he’d survived. That he was  _ alive _ .

A sob wracked his chest, shaking hands pressing hard to his mouth to suppress it; but it escaped regardless, throwing his body forward as if he’d been slammed in the back with a fist. Tears streamed silently down his cheeks, his whole body trembling; he couldn’t speak, though there was so much he wanted to say. He seemed paralyzed in the moment.

And then he fell, almost stumbled, grabbing a hard plastic chair and pulling himself up next to Robert’s bed, hands frantically reaching for his pale, still ones. He forgot for that moment all that had happened between them, and he pressed his fingers to his salty, tearstained lips, mumbling the same words over and over again, “Robert, Rob, oh my God,  _ Robert _ .”

“I’m sorry,” he choked, his eyes never leaving his husband’s face. “I’m so sorry, Rob. I’m so sorry I let this happen.” He roved over the planes of the familiar face, freckles stark against his skin, fluttering soft lashes and worry lines that hadn’t been there before. He looked as if he’d aged a lot in five months, and yet remained impossibly young, hair flat against his forehead with a few days’ worth of faint stubble on his jaw. It made Aaron smile, despite himself, knowing how much Robert hated it when he forgot to shave for a few days, said it itched and scratched like crazy. Said he didn’t understand how Aaron maintained such a full beard all the time. 

“I’ve missed ya,” Aaron whispered, his thumbs absently finding the soft skin on the back of Robert’s hand and rubbing there in small circles. “If I’d’ve known...if I’d had any kind of idea that you were gonna do  _ this… _ ” he trailed off, sniffing, “I would’ve helped. I would never have let ya walk away, you know that, don’t you?” He tried to compose himself, but his eyes burned and the lump in his throat just wouldn’t shift. 

“I’m so sorry you thought you couldn’t talk to me about it,” he wept, more tears splashing down onto his jumper. His body didn’t seem to be running out of tears to cry; more kept coming, impossibly so. More even than when Robert had first left and all he did was cry. “I let you down, Robert. I stayed so angry with ya for stupid stuff and I never even saw what was going on with ya on the inside…”

“But I’m here now,” he said firmly. “I’m here and I’m gonna take care of ya, whatever it takes. And I know you can’t hear me but...I just wanted to let ya know that.”

Robert remained asleep, still as anything. The only movement was the gentle rise and fall of his chest; Aaron followed it with his eyes, up and down, up and down, still squeezing Robert’s fingers with his own hands. It was his left hand, he realized, and the band of paler skin on his finger where he used to wear his wedding ring matched Aaron’s own. 

He kicked himself for not bringing them with him. Something to show Robert that he meant what he said. 

“I miss ya,” he said quietly. “I’m gonna help you get better and then - then we’ll figure out where we go from here, okay? We’ll figure it out. You and me against the world, remember?”

Of course, he didn’t get an answer. He didn’t need one, though. It was a silent promise, an affirmation of a commitment that went beyond rings or a marriage license or a piece of letterheaded paper separating them in law. None of those things mattered. It was just him and Robert now, the way it always had been, and Aaron was determined to make sure he wasn’t alone in this. 

And then he saw the shining silver handcuffs, one on each of Robert’s too-thin wrists, chaining him to the bed, just like -

_ Just like he was a criminal _ .

And his heart sank like a stone once more.

\- - - - - - -

“I want them off,” was the first thing he said to the CO as soon as he left the room. She gave him a blank look, so he elaborated. “The handcuffs. I want them off of him.”

“I can’t do that,” Tanner replied. “It’s standard procedure for high-risk inmates.”

“High risk?  _ High risk? _ ” Aaron cried in disbelief. “Have you seen him? He’s not goin’ anywhere. He’s not a monster, he’s  _ ill _ and he needs  _ help _ , not to be chained up like some animal in a zoo.”

“It’s necessary for the safety of the inmate and of other people,” she repeated, the same cool, calm expression on her face as earlier. “All prisoners with a certain category of conviction are detained this way if they’re taken to hospital.”

Aaron wanted to swear, loudly; but he held his tongue, instead gritting his teeth as if his life depended on it, he could almost hear his jaw grinding. “So you mean he’s a murderer so he has to be chained up so he doesn’t start goin’ on a killin’ rampage, that it?”

“I’m sorry, sir, it’s for everyone’s safety,” Tanner said. “The inmate doesn’t get personal exemptions-”

“His  _ name _ ,” Aaron said slowly, “is  _ Robert _ . Robert! So stop talking about him as if he’s some -  _ thing _ you can control, because he’s not. He’s brilliant and clever and amazin’ and -  _ brave _ . He’s brave. Braver than you’ll ever be. And I bet you don’t even know the circumstances of why he’s in prison, either, do ya, because none of you care and you never will.”

He realized, as he spoke, how true it was. Once you were inside, once you were in the system, that was it. You were just another number, another body to them. Rarely did you ever come across anyone who treated you like a person, like another human being. Yeah, there were some terrible people in prison, but most people? They were just like anyone else. And they didn’t deserve to be treated like they didn’t exist. 

“He’s just another inmate to you,” Aaron shrugged. “But to  _ me _ -” his voice broke, caught on the words he wanted to say. “-to me, he’s everythin’ I’ve ever wanted, and everythin’ I never thought I’d get. He’s already strugglin’. Don’t give him any more reason to hate himself more than he already does. You’ve got no idea what it’s like.”

He knew he was pleading, begging even. But if he could do this one thing for Robert….maybe everything else would get easier too.

Tanner sighed. Then she said, “I’ll see what I can do. But there are no guarantees.”

“Thank you,” Aaron breathed with relief. “ _ Thank you _ .”

He turned back to look through the small window in the door of the room, at Robert’s still, pale figure sleeping and wired up to machines, drips and feeds and all kinds of medicines designed to rejuvenate his body going in and out of him. It was both a familiar sight and completely alien, something he’d seen before and simultaneously something he’d never seen - or rather, something he thought he’d never see. 

He was supposed to be the broken, damaged one. He was the one with the problems, not Robert. 

They’d always had a kind of similarity about them, a synchronicity that just  _ fit _ . They knew each other implicitly and without thinking about it; one look and Aaron would be able to tell what Robert was thinking even if he didn’t say it, they could communicate just by touching a hand to a back or shoulder or waist. They laughed at the same jokes and backed up the same opinions against other people. 

Perhaps, in knowing Robert so well and so intimately for himself as an individual, he’d overlooked the very crucial ways in which he was exactly like him.

\- - - - - - -

Aaron came back the very next day, and this time, the receptionist didn’t challenge him or ask why he was there. The same redheaded nurse he’d seen the day before led him silently to Robert’s room, a sort of hopeful but sympathetic expression on her face. Having been too distraught, too angry, the previous day, he hadn’t gotten her name; upon reading her name tag now, he saw it was Lucie. Lucie Johnson.

When all this was over, he was seriously considering buying Nurse Johnson some flowers.

_ But it isn’t yet _ , an unfortunate little voice inside his head reminded him. The one that had taunted him all night, what ifs and buts going round and round in his head as he’d slept fitfully on a too-hard single bed in a cheap hotel room in a Premier Inn he’d found close to the hospital and prison. He’d stared at the bare walls until his eyes blurred, tossed and turned and pummelled his pillow this way and that, adjusted and readjusted the duvet, but nothing had helped. All he’d thought about was Robert, about his pale face and still body, about the ache in his own heart as he’d seen him lying there, vulnerable. More vulnerable than Aaron had ever seen him. How he’d let him down. How he’d failed at being a husband by breaking their marriage vows,  _ in sickness and in health… _

There was a new guard outside Robert’s hospital room today, a large bloke with shoulders twice the size of Aaron’s. He was taller than him, too, and the stony expression on his face made Aaron’s insides squirm with an echo of unease from days gone past. His name badge said Wilson. 

“I’m here to see my husband,” Aaron said, directing his words to him so that he’d understand. He wasn’t going to be messed around today, not by anyone. He briefly saw Wilson’s expression flicker, a quirk of the lips and eyebrows; and then it was gone.  _ Good _ , he thought.  _ Keep your opinions to yourself _ .

“Go on,” he said gruffly, in a voice that said he really couldn’t care any less who Aaron was or why he was there. Probably didn’t even care who Robert was, just got stuck on guard duty outside his room because his name happened to be on the rota.  _ Come have a stare at the convicted murderer who tried to kill himself _ . Easy money for a bloke like him who didn’t give a flying fig either way.

If he didn’t already know full well the prison system was shit, he definitely would have now.

Aaron pushed open the door and stepped inside. Robert was asleep again, but instead of being flat on his back, he was curled into one side facing away from Aaron, his long body scrunched up impossibly small. All he could see was the back of his blond head and the shape of his shoulders underneath the blanket, too thin, all sharp angles, the muscular width of his torso that used to cover Aaron’s so well when they pressed themselves together in bed, gone. Aaron knew from experience that prison food was rubbish, but Robert looked thinner than that. It wasn’t just lack of proper nutritious meals, he looked like he hadn’t been eating at all.

_ But the handcuffs _ , his mind supplied.  _ The handcuffs have gone. One of them, anyway _ .

He breathed a sigh of relief, a small smile finding his lips. That was a start, and one he was pleased with; it meant that now his husband could get more comfortable in his bed, could curl up under his blankets if he wished, instead of being chained into one single position. 

Aaron pulled up the same chair he’d used the day before and positioned himself as close to the bed as he could, his knees bumping the edge of the mattress. “Hey, Rob,” he murmured softly, “it’s me again. Couldn’t wait to come back and see ya, could I?” His fingers ached to touch, to stroke the soft curls of hair at the nape of Robert’s neck, to squeeze his bicep in an affectionate gesture of reassurance. He wanted to climb into the bed with him and press his body right along his husband’s, wrapping an arm tight around his waist and pulling him in, mumbling soft words full of meaning into his shoulder, words that were for no-one else but Robert.

Instead, he reached out and let his hand lie flat on the mattress just inches from Robert’s prone body, his left hand, the one with the band of slightly paler skin where his wedding ring should have been. His blunt nails raked into the sheets as he used every ounce of his willpower not to grab hold of Robert and refuse to let him go.

Then Robert stirred, snuffling in his sleep and shifting his weight so that he slowly, painfully slowly, came to wakefulness, every movement an effort as though wading through treacle or pulling himself through wet cement. He finally rolled onto his back, pale eyes cloudy with pain and confusion and half-sleep. Aaron knew the feeling well. That sense of being present but not being  _ there _ , like everything around you was shrouded in mist. Even your own body would feel alien to you, like you didn’t exist at all.

“Hey, you,” Aaron whispered. The words were an effort, fighting to speak through everything he was feeling that was currently swirling through him all at once. “I’m so glad you’re awake. You have no idea how much.”

“Aaron?” Robert’s voice was a rasp, barely audible, the syllables cracking in his throat and coming out strange. It was a child’s voice, minute and fearful. “What’re you doin’ here?”

“You really think I was gonna be anywhere else?” Aaron asked. “When I heard you’d- when DS Wise came to the house and told me what you did-I knew I couldn’t leave ya. I knew I had to come.”

Robert turned away from him, closing his eyes. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, I should,” Aaron said firmly. “I married you. In sickness and in health, isn’t that how it goes?”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Robert repeated. “And I shouldn’t be here, either. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” he whimpered, shaking his head. “I was supposed to go away and leave everyone and not cause them any more pain. But that didn’t happen because no matter what I do, life won’t just let me  _ go away _ .”

“Die, you mean?” Aaron asked. His voice trembled. “When you say  _ go away _ , you mean dyin’, being dead.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore,” Robert said, in that tiny childlike voice again. “I don’t want to  _ be hurt _ anymore. I’m done sufferin’ and I’m done pretending that I’m okay with it, because I’m not and I never will be.”

“But you can get help,” Aaron protested. “You can - I don’t know, get a therapist or a psychiatrist, I bet the prison would get you one. You could talk to someone. Not-not do  _ this _ ,” his voice cracked, and he fought the urge to grab Robert’s hand, squeeze his fingers in his own, never let go. “I don’t want you to die, Rob.”

“It’s not your decision!” Robert snapped suddenly, making Aaron jump backwards a little. “You should never have come after me. Why couldn’t you just let me go? Why do you always have to worm your way back in no matter how many times I try to shake you off?”

He knew it was the anger talking; he’d done the same, back when he’d been in the same situation, yelling and screaming at those who tried to convince him they loved him, that it didn’t matter, that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. 

“I love you,” he replied simply, keeping his voice as level as possible. “I love you and I don’t care what happens to us, as a couple, as long as I know you can look after yourself and that you’re goin’ to be okay.”

There was a brief moment of silence. Robert’s eyes were still closed, his face a mask of agony, drying tears sticky at the corners of his eyes, the lids bruised purple. “Don’t get your hopes up. At least one of us should live the life we were supposed to have, and it’s not going to be me.”

Aaron shook his head, slowly. “You’re wrong. You do deserve to be loved, Robert. I know it doesn’t feel like it now but, you do. You’re better than what your mind is tellin’ ya. It’s an illness, Rob, it won’t last forever. Look at me, eh? I came through it, and so can you.” He took a deep breath. He wanted to make these next words count. “I believe in ya.”

Robert’s eyes opened, huge and blue-green and sparkling in his unnaturally pale face. “What if it’s not enough to stop me from hating myself so much that I wish I’d never been alive in the first place?”

“Then I’ll be here,” Aaron replied, matter-of-factly. “As long as it takes.” 

“What if I don’t believe you’ll stick around?” Robert asked. “Everyone leaves or hates me eventually. S’one of the reasons why I’m better off gone. There’s no-one left to be hurt by.”

“Well, not me,” Aaron shook his head. “Never.”

“I don’t know if I can trust what you say,” Robert admitted. “My head...it’s all over the place...I’ve gone mad, Aaron. Ask any of the guards, I’m sure they’ve got plenty of horror stories to share. S’why I’ve got this,” he indicated a tube, thin and filled with a viscous, semi-transparent liquid, fed into his right nostril and taped to his cheekbone, “after a while, I stopped eating. So now I get force-fed like I’m a prisoner on hunger strike. Oh wait,” he laughed, dry and hollow and bitter, an unsettling sound that went to Aaron’s bones. “I am.”

“Robert,” Aaron said sharply. “Don’t. Please don’t.”  _ Don’t make jokes like that, because I’m already so scared of losing you. _

“I thought you liked gallows humour,” Robert said. “Aren’t you the reigning misery champion of Yorkshire or something?”

“You’re not well, Robert,” Aaron replied softly. “You need to be helped. Let  _ me _ help. Let anyone help.  _ Please _ .”

_ Let me in _ , he wanted to beg.  _ I’m your husband. Let me  _ in.

“You deserve so much more than sufferin’ like this, Robert,” he said. “I want to look after ya and love ya and - if you go, what happens to me, eh? Where do I go if you disappear somewhere I can’t follow ya?”

_ You have so much to live for, and you don’t even know it. _

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the bed. His hands were inches from Robert’s. “You’re  _ my _ Robert. And I love the  _ bones _ off of him, you know that?  _ You _ . I love  _ you _ . No matter what. No matter how much you try to push me away. You’re in here,” he grabbed Robert’s hand and pressed it to his chest, over his frantically beating heart. He tried not to think about how thin his fingers felt, how fragile, like they might break if he pressed too hard. “You’re in me and you’re a part of me. I ain’t leavin’ you behind again, ‘cause I might die right along with ya if I do.”

“I’m not worth it,” Robert whispered. Tears slid from the corners of his eyes, dripping down his chin. His lashes stuck together and shone like crystals from the teardrops. “I’m really not.”

“You are,” Aaron contradicted. “If you’ll let me, I’ll show you just how much.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Robert said, pulling his hand away from Aaron’s chest and turning away from him, huddling onto his side. The chain from the remaining handcuff jangled against the railing on the edge of the bed as he repositioned himself. “I’m already gone. You just need to let me be, now.”

_ I just want to be myself now, with you. _

Aaron swallowed, nodded, wiped at his face. He stood up and leaned over the bed, to press a kiss to Robert’s temple, lingering a few moments longer than he might normally have to remember what it felt like to put his lips to his husband’s skin. 

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he murmured.  _ And every day after that, for as long as it takes to help you heal. _

There was no reply. He didn’t need one, really, he realized; the words themselves, spoken aloud, were enough. As long as Robert knew, that was all Aaron needed for now. 

He gave his too-thin shoulder a gentle squeeze and went to leave the room, taking one last look at Robert’s once again motionless form. He knew he’d done the right thing, coming here, whether Robert believed that or not right now.

\- - - - - - -

“How are the boys?” Aaron asked nonchalantly on the phone with Cain after he’d got back to his hotel room, lying spread-eagled on the bed with his coat and shoes still on. “Not wrecked the place, have they?”

He was trying to keep his voice light, his tone neutral, though his throat felt scratchy and hoarse and his eyes streamed from the soreness of rubbing at them with cheap toilet paper in one of the hospital bathrooms after he’d left Robert. Asking about Isaac and Kyle was the safest option, distracting Cain from asking  _ him _ anything about Robert he wasn’t sure he could face sharing right now.

“I’m charging you five hundred quid for the gaming set I’m gonna hav’ta get Kyle for Christmas after this,” Cain said. “He’s been stuck to the damn thing ever since he set his eyes on it.”

“Well, I am the bad influence in the family,” Aaron tried to joke, but it felt flat and wrong to his own ears. “Don’t let ‘im touch the 18-rated games though, or any of the rude ones Gerry left behind.”

In the background, he could hear Isaac babbling, making  _ rrrrrr _ car noises and shouting  _ “Beep! Beep! Beep! _ ” like he was imitating an ambulance. It suddenly, quite unexpectedly, made him miss Seb; the way his little fingers clutched onto his favourite blue-cabbed lorry, the van with the yellow trim, a small red fire engine that had come in a set of emergency services vehicles he’d bought him as a spontaneous present. Something clenched in his chest, and for a moment he found it difficult to find his breath. 

“I wish they could’ve been mates,” he suddenly blurted out. “Isaac and Seb. They would’ve loved it, having someone their own age around to play with, they’d never be on their own.”

He saw it in his mind’s eye; Isaac’s riot of curls and Seb’s bright strawberry-blond head hunched together, making up invented worlds, chasing butterflies across the fields at Butler’s or racing around on their trikes. Seb had already been speaking when Aaron had last seen him - how many words did he know now? Could he talk in full sentences? Had he started learning to write? Could he read and recognize his own name?

“You’re kiddin’, right? If I let Isaac anywhere near Sugden’s lot there’d be chaos,” Cain replied. “I’d never be able to wrangle ‘em both. Speaking of, how is he doing?”

This was the question Aaron hadn’t quite wanted to answer yet. “Not great,” he eventually said. 

“Can you tell me what actually happened, or d’you want it to stay between you two?” Cain asked. 

“No,” Aaron said, swallowing. “No, I trust you, it’s just - it’s really bad, Cain,  _ really _ bad.” He thought of Robert, of how he’d said he didn’t want to hurt people anymore, how he wanted everything to just  _ go away _ . How he’d begged Aaron to allow him to die. “I didn’t tell ya the whole truth, not before. He’s in hospital because he tried to take his own life.”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone. “Jesus. I’m sorry, Aaron. For Robert, too. That’s rough.”

“He was always the strong one, y’know? Always keepin’ me together, stoppin’ me from getting inside my own head,” he said, and the tears threatened to come again. “And to think that all this time he’d been sufferin’ and said nothing because he was worried about  _ me _ .” A short burst of laughter left him, delirious almost, no real humour in it. “He was the one going to prison for fourteen years but he was worried about  _ me _ ! And I’m the idiot who left him to rot and believed him at his word when he said we were over in that divorce letter.”

“You didn’t leave him to rot,” Cain protested, “so get that out of your head. You were both in a bad place, sounds like, and you didn’t talk to each other like you should have. And trust me from experience that when someone in that place doesn’t want to talk, you can’t make them, can ya?”

“You’re talkin’ about me,” Aaron said. Stating the obvious. 

“Yeah, I am, great big knucklehead that you were. Trying to talk sense into you was sometimes like talkin’ to a brick wall.” There was a rustle, and Aaron thought that Cain had shrugged. “But things worked out in the end, didn’t they?”

“I don’t know what to do, Cain,” Aaron said, sitting upright and hugging his knees up to his chest. “I don’t know how to start helpin’ him when he’s determined to not be alive.”

This seemed to have Cain startled, because it was a moment before he spoke. “You mean he’s actively suicidal?”

“Yeah,” Aaron said thickly, his throat burning around the hard lump that seemed to have formed there. “Yeah, he told me as much.”

“Poor bloke,” he muttered with a sigh. He sounded genuinely distressed, and that was a sort of comfort for Aaron - at least someone else cared. At least he wasn’t completely alone. “Well, I’ll be thinkin’ of ‘im, if it means anythin’ to him at all.”

“Thanks,” Aaron sniffed. “It seems like you’re the only one who still gave a toss about Robert after he gave himself in.”

“He weren’t my best mate, but I know he loves you to pieces. If we have that in common, that’s good enough for me,” Cain said. “And Aaron? Look after yourself, yeah? You’ll be of nowt use to him if you lose your head an’ all.”

He nodded in silent agreement, not thinking about the fact that Cain couldn’t see him. Then he ended the call, hugged his arms around himself, and cried like a baby until he couldn’t possibly cry anymore.

\- - - - - - -

Twilight was falling when he finally dragged himself up from the bed and he realized he badly needed a shower. He was still in his clothes from two days ago, sweaty and stiff with tears and the grime of travel. Thankfully, he’d haphazardly thrown a spare set of clothes in a bag when he’d thrown himself into his car and driven to Southampton, but that was all he’d brought with him; save for his wallet and car keys, a packet of wipes he’d left in the car from the last time he’d been to the gym, and the half-empty bottles of water he’d bought on route to the Isle of Wight, he had nothing else with him. 

But he hadn’t planned much ahead when Robert’s safety, and life, had been hanging in the balance. He could be forgiven for having different priorities.

Toeing off his shoes and throwing his coat over a chair, he trudged to the small bathroom and pulled off the rest of his clothes, turning on the shower to its fullest setting and letting the hot spray fill the room with steam. The tightness in his chest eased slightly. In the mirror over the sink, he caught sight of himself laid completely bare to the world. His skin was sallow and pale, eyes red, his hair a wild birds’ nest that he doubted he’d be able to get a comb through if he had one. His gaze travelled downwards, to the patchwork of faded pink-and-red-and-silver scars scattered across his chest and stomach, some small, some significantly larger and more recent. Even the angriest of them were over three years old now, the gradient of their colours indicating how long ago he’d taken a blade to his skin. Robert would sometimes touch them reverently, stroking the tender skin with feather-light fingertips, murmuring about how brave Aaron was, how strong, how much toughness he’d had to develop to overcome the things he had. 

_ “You’re much braver than I am, _ ” he’d said one night, his head pillowed on Aaron’s bare chest, one arm wrapped around his waist, hugging him close the way a kid might cuddle a favourite teddy bear. It wasn’t long after they’d found Rebecca after she’d gone missing, Robert still buzzing with anxiety and stress, unable to sleep peacefully for fear that Aaron might be the next to disappear, or Seb.  _ “You hurt yourself and then you kept going. I don’t know if I could do that _ .”

He closed his eyes against the memory, inhaling deeply and steadily, the way his counsellor had taught him years ago. The mirror had fogged from the steam, and he could no longer see his own reflection, which was just as well, because he’d been close to opening up that Pandora’s box of a question he’d struggled with for most of his life; were the scars that hurt the most physical, or mental?

\- - - - - - -

Visiting hours were almost over by the time he went back to the hospital, the night outside inky black and a group of green-uniformed paramedics changing shift outside A&E. He had twenty minutes to spare, the nurse on duty waving him through the eerily silent corridors, the lights dimmed for the night as the wards closed to allow the patients to sleep. Hospitals had never been his favourite place in the world, too many bad memories, but he felt strangely calm as he tread the familiar route, a kind of warmth welcoming him despite the horrible circumstances. Like he was finding his way home.

_ Soft git _ , Robert would say, nudging him in the ribs affectionately before kissing him, hard. Aaron would giggle and squirm away from his wandering hands tickling his sides, like they were both five years old and rolling around on the couch when a parent’s back was turned. 

The same guard from that morning was outside the door, but this time he didn’t even blink or acknowledge Aaron at all, simply let him push open the door and go inside. 

Robert was sitting up in bed, half-asleep with his eyelids fluttering between open and closed. He wondered if it was exhaustion that was keeping him docile, or whether they’d given him anything to sedate him medically, to stop him from getting too upset and kicking off at the nurses or even one of the guards outside his door. It may have been the light in his room, but he looked like he’d had a little colour come back into his sunken cheeks, his lips no longer white but a soft blushing pink.

“Hey,” Aaron said softly, crossing the few paces between the door and Robert’s bed. He sank into his usual chair, tucking his legs up under himself so that he was perched on it as comfortably as he could be, given its hard unforgiving plastic. “I don’t have long. I would have come earlier to see you but I must’ve fallen asleep for more than I thought.” 

“S’okay,” Robert shrugged. “Didn’t expect you to come back, anyway, not after you saw me like this.”

“Like what?” Aaron asked. “Like you’re ill? Because you are, and I don’t  _ care _ . I’d be here any time of day no matter what, you must know that.”

“I don’t,” Robert said, shaking his head. “I can’t. I can’t believe anything anyone says anymore because of -  _ this _ ,” his eyes welled with tears, pointing a jabbing finger at his temple, “because of how I feel, in here, it never  _ stops _ -”

“Ssh, ssh,” Aaron soothed, reaching to grab Robert’s hand, cradling it in both of his own. His fingers were cold, and Aaron’s hands were warm, and he longed for the feel of their rings clacking together, shining metal on shining metal, catching the light and laying almost side by side, like two halves of a perfect pair. 

Robert sobbed silently, tears streaming down his face, and Aaron longed to climb into that bed alongside him and hold him close - but he knew he couldn’t, he shouldn’t, and it  _ hurt _ that he couldn’t do that anymore. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” Aaron insisted, his voice low and soft. “It’ll be okay, I swear. It’s not gonna feel like this forever, Rob. I promise.”

“How do you know?” Robert asked suddenly, his voice sharp, cutting through the stillness of the room. His sea-green eyes flashed with an angry kind of clarity in his tear-streaked face. “You don’t know how I feel. You’ve got  _ no _ idea what’s in my head - what I have to deal with, every day and every bloody night, not being able to sleep. Feeling worthless and  _ useless _ to everyone around me, everyone in my life and not being able to do anything about it.” He drew his hand from Aaron’s, curling up so that his forehead was resting on his knees, wrapping his arms around them like a child. “I hate myself for what I’ve done. The things I’ve done before and the stuff I’ve done in the last couple of years that’ve hurt everyone I love. Vic. Diane. Liv. My  _ son _ , my little boy that I loved more than anything - what kind of father am I, that I’ve hurt him so deeply and he doesn’t even know it yet?”

“A really good one,” Aaron said, nodding, as sincere as ever when it came to Robert. “He’ll know that you did the right thing, you tried to own up to stuff you’ve done wrong and you apologized for a mistake you made. You gave yourself up to make him  _ happy _ so you’d be a good example for him to grow up hearing about, so he’d be able to turn to ya and think, my dad’s pretty great for admitting he was wrong and accepting the consequences of that without trying to buy his way out of it.”

“He’s going to hate me,” Robert whispered. “I abandoned him.”

“No, you didn’t,” Aaron insisted. “You were  _ protecting _ him. And coming from someone who’s dad was - well, not even a dad, to be honest, just a sperm donor really - it means a lot to have a dad like that. Who’d do anything for ya, even if it meant he couldn’t be in your life anymore.”

“I don’t  _ want _ to not be in his life,” Robert said tearfully, resting his cheek on his bent knees and staring at Aaron with huge eyes. “I want to be with  _ him _ .”

_ So do I _ , Aaron wanted to say; it was on the tip of his tongue. But he knew that this wasn’t the time nor the place to tell Robert the truth about Seb - that he hadn’t seen him since a couple of months after Robert went to prison, either.

Instead, he said, “And I wanna be with  _ you _ . No matter what happens, no matter what it takes, even if I have to camp out on the floor of this room every night on some rubbish hospital mattress. I’m stayin’. No arguments, Robert.”

Robert sat up a little straighter, scrubbed a hand across his face, sniffed hard. He looked straight ahead as he replied, “You deserve better than me. You deserve better than  _ this _ .”

“Tough,” he said firmly. “Because I don’t want any better. I want  _ you _ , and I want you to get better and I want you to come back fightin’ from this like I know you can.”

“Why?” Robert asked. “Why bother when I’ve caused you so much pain?” 

“Because the worst of us is still a hundred times better than  _ no _ us,” Aaron said simply. And as the clock struck 8pm, effectively ending visitation for the night, he meant every single word. 

\- - - - - - -

He extended his stay at the hotel for the rest of the week, and arranged for Cain to send him some spare clothes so that he’d have something fresh and clean to change into when he saw Robert. He bought throwaway toiletries at a pharmacy nearby and finally had a proper shave and more than a quick once-over with the tiny bar of soap that came complementary with the room. When he was done, he felt better and less like he’d spent the last 48 hours scrambling like a madman to be by the side of someone who needed him, and more like someone who  _ could _ provide that kind of care that that someone needed. 

Robert was on his mind all the time. Whatever he was doing, wherever he was, he was there, his gaunt face and haunted eyes taking up all of Aaron’s thinking time. His heart felt crushed in his chest, being squeezed tight by something he couldn’t see but could  _ feel _ acutely, throbbing with every beat of the organ. He knew he’d made the right decision, knew it in his bones, but it didn’t mean that it still didn’t hurt to think that it had come to this. That things had got so bad, so fast, and they were both struggling to find the surface of the water they were drowning in in very different ways.

He couldn’t have forseen this a year ago, when he and Robert had said their wedding vows in front of their friends and family, had hugged each other tight and cried into their first kiss as husbands. How happy they’d been. What a wonderful day it was, that day he and Robert got married properly. 

He squeezed his eyes shut against the memory, taking a gulp of the too-strong coffee he’d made from the small kettle in his room. It tasted old, nothing like the rich, expensive stuff Robert had bought for their French press back at home, proudly demonstrating how it worked and presenting Aaron with, admittedly, the best cup of coffee he’d ever tasted, a beaming smile on his face at having successfully converted Aaron to one of his more refined tastes. He remembered how enthusiastic Robert had been about that damn French press, wittering away to himself about having  _ real _ coffee,  _ proper _ coffee like it’s supposed to be drunk and not the cheap tat from the cafe or the watered-down stuff Jimmy made at the portacabin that always tasted a bit off because the kettle was full of limescale. 

Suddenly, the taste of the coffee made his stomach turn; he recoiled from the mug as he set it down, cringing at the taste on his tongue.  _ Not like how Robert makes it _ , he thought.  _ Not like how Robert makes it at all _ .

Funny, how the most random things can make you think of someone you love and simultaneously break your heart.

\- - - - - - -

He’d been gone for three days now. On the third day, he arrived to see Robert and found that there was already someone else in the room - a red-headed woman with purple glasses and a file on her knees, writing something into a notepad propped open on top of it. 

“Who are you?” he asked, ruder than he’d intended; but his defenses had come up, his hackles raised at seeing this stranger in Robert’s room, his  _ husband’s _ room. He turned to Robert, who was sitting up again, as pale as the pillow he rested on but with two small, bright pink spots on his cheeks. The colour Aaron had seen in his face last night had stayed, then; that was a good thing, and his heart flared with a fluttering of warmth as he took him in. He was, at least physically, getting better, then. “Who’s she?”

“I’m a psychiatrist,” the woman explained. “My name is Dr Williams. I’ve been asked to spend some time with Mr Sugden and assess how he can be helped going forward.”

“So you’re from the prison, then, right?” Aaron asked, his voice biting. “You’re going to figure out how you can send him back there with the least amount of help you can get away with so he at least won’t try to harm himself so obviously again?”

“Aaron, it’s okay,” Robert said placatingly. “She’s not from the prison.”

This took Aaron by surprise. He whipped his head around again to face her. “You’re not?”

Dr. Williams shook her head. “No. I work for the hospital. We’re affiliated with Rightworth Prison, but they didn’t ask me to come. In fact, the doctors here who saw to your husband when he came in specifically asked that the prison  _ not _ get involved.” She gave an unexpected smile. “Apparently someone made quite a fuss and made a convincing argument that Robert get help from an independent source that the hospital agreed with.”

“ _ Me? _ ” Aaron asked, completely stumped. “But I - I mean -” 

_ I was only doing what I thought was right.  _

_ I was protecting someone I love. _

He looked to Robert, searching his face for anything that might make things clearer. Whether he’d had a hand in it. But his expression was impassive; he looked as if he might fall back to sleep, he was blinking so slowly. 

“You’ve been a big help in advocating for your husband’s care,” Dr. Williams said. “Whether you realize it or not. You made quite the impression on the medical team here.”

“I don’t understand what that means goin’ forward,” Aaron said. He felt confused and bemused, and clearly Robert knew no more than he did about this.

“It means that Robert may be able to stay here, as a residential patient, for as long as he needs to get the right psychiatric help rather than being transferred back to Rightworth as soon as he’s physically able,” Dr. Williams explained. “Potentially, there is a case to be made for extenuating circumstances in an emergency for his sentence to be reduced by a review panel, but that won’t happen for a while yet.”

Aaron’s eyes widened; the realization of what she was saying hit him like a lorry, his throat and eyes burned. “What? You’re saying he can come home early?”

“Not quite,” Dr. Williams clarified. “I’m saying it’s a strong possibility that he can get his situation looked at by a panel given the medical needs involved and the potential risk to his mental health if he were returned to Rightworth unilaterally without significant support, which, I’ll be honest, not a lot of prisons are willing to, or interested in, giving.” Her mouth turned down unhappily at her own explanation. “So there are huge benefits here.”

Aaron crossed the room, sank into his usual plastic chair, and took Robert’s hand. Absently, his fingers rubbed over the space on Robert’s ring finger where the ring itself should be; holding Robert’s hand without feeling the metal against his fingers was strange. It felt wrong, odd, like something was out of place. Like the entire universe had shifted just a few degrees off-kilter, and now everything was not how it was supposed to be.

Just like it had felt for the last seven months, without Robert, alone.

“What do I need to do?” Aaron asked. “How do I help him?”

Dr. Williams smiled. “Be there for him. Help him see that the best decision for him is to be as close to home as possible, in the right  _ place _ as possible. So many prisoners like him suffer because they’re left to their own devices in the least human of institutions, no matter how luxurious comparatively they might be or how well they’ve improved their quality and living standards.”

He looked at Robert’s sleeping face. He watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, the gentle flutter of his eyelashes against his cheeks. He followed the familiar pattern of freckles across his nose and cheeks, the long line of his neck, his soft pink lips. 

He’d do anything for Robert. He’d live and he’d die for Robert.

“He tried to divorce me, you know,” Aaron said into the quiet of the room after a few moments. “Sent me a solicitor’s letter in the post, forms to fill in and sign. I ripped them up and chucked them in the bin where they belong. Think I even poured some old dregs of coffee over them, to make sure they couldn’t be used again.” 

“Sounds like you have a very strong and very deep love for one another,” Dr. Williams commented. “Did they tell you why the hospital was so eager to get in touch when he was admitted after his overdose?”

Aaron shook his head. “No. S’pose I don’t.”

“He was in severe psychological distress,” she explained. “It was very difficult to communicate with him and find out exactly what had happened, the guards at the prison weren’t exactly sure themselves. But despite quite clearly being very unwell and not in the right frame of mind to do much of anything, he was clear on one thing.”

“What’s that?” Aaron asked.

“Your name,” she said. “He kept saying your name over and over again. In the end, it was only reassurance that you would be contacted, as well as some sedatives, that got him to relax enough to be sent to surgery so that his stomach could be pumped.”

_ Only reassurance that you would be contacted. _

_ Only reassurance. _

_ Only you. _

“No-one understands how much I love ‘im,” he said thickly. “I need him and he needs me. That’s why we’ve always worked, it’s why when we’re apart things always go south so fast...Sorry,” he sniffed, wiping at his nose with his sleeve. “You don’t need to hear this. It’s just, my Mum and the rest of my family, well most of them anyway, they don’t understand.”

“They’re not supportive?” Dr. Williams prodded, her eyebrows raised slightly. 

“Not like that, they’re fine with me being gay and everythin’, it’s just...well, it’s been complicated, we didn’t have the easiest start and stuff...happened that wasn’t great, but we moved past all that and really built a great, lovin’ relationship, y’know? And with him I’m happier than I’ve ever been and probably ever will be. Still they try to tell me that I can do better. But why do I want anythin’  _ better _ when Robert is and always will be my best?” He shrugged. “Anyway, they don’t get it and the only person I can really talk to is my uncle. He’s the only one who even knows I’m here.”

“What about Robert’s family?” she asked. “Do you have a good relationship with your in-laws?”

Aaron shrugged again. “It comes and goes. Me and his sister used to be big mates when we were kids, we’ve always been close but recently…” he trailed off, a bitter taste filling his mouth at the thought of Vic cosying up to Luke, letting Wendy visit Harry, playing happy families while Aaron suffered and Robert gave up his freedom. “I guess you can say the situation’s changed.”

“It sounds like both of you have been fairly isolated from any support networks,” Dr. Williams said. 

“S’pose you could say that,” Aaron replied. “But it never mattered, y’know? Because we had each other, stuff what anyone else thinks or says about it. I’m a grown adult, and I choose Robert every time, whatever happens. I’ll  _ always _ choose him.”

“It seems like you both are very lucky to have found each other,” Dr. Williams said. She smiled, a gentle, reassuring smile. “Hold onto that.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m going to,” Aaron stated firmly, his eyes not once leaving Robert’s face, and his hand never once inching away from holding Robert’s. 

_ Only you. _

Only each other.

\- - - - - - -

One night, when he was up in Scotland, he’d drank too much and ended up crying on Debbie’s shoulder, clinging to his older cousin in a way he hadn’t done since they were maybe teenagers. He’d sobbed into her jumper about missing Robert, about how intolerant his family were of his choice to not move on immediately, about what it was like to sleep in a big empty bed and not hear the sound of the shower in the morning, drowning out Robert’s attempt at humming along to whatever was playing through the Bluetooth speakers he’d bought purely he could listen to the radio while in the bathroom. 

Instead of telling him to man up, or get over it, she’d wrapped an arm around his shoulders and held him like he was Jack or Sarah, one of her own children crying, and let him get it out of his system through a pile of tissues and orders for Uncle Zak to bring him a cup of the strongest, sweetest tea he could make. 

He’d ended up asking her about what Robert was like, before he knew him. Why she’d been willing, as a teenager, to abandon everything and run off to France with him and her baby and nothing but the money in their pockets, making big plans that didn’t fit a brief fling with the brother of her child’s father he knew she’d had. 

_ “Why’d you want to run away with Robert, of all people?” _ he’d slurred, sloshing the cup of tea Zak handed him over the small table and onto his jeans.  _ “He was barely even your boyfriend, Belle said. So why? _ ”

“ _ He was the only one who understood me, _ ” she’d said simply. “ _ We both felt like outcasts. His dad hated him, him and Andy were rowing all the time, he was either lookin’ after Victoria or wandering off by himself. I had a baby to look after and my daughter’s very existence had torn my family apart. And being a teen mum wasn’t all that great in such a small-minded village, either.” _

“ _ So what happened? _ ” he’d asked her, wide-eyed and pleading, searching for any kind of connection he could make, anything to hold onto that proved that Robert was the man Aaron fell in love with, the good man who didn’t deserve to be punished for protecting someone he cared about, who loved Aaron and hadn’t tried to cut him off and send him away. 

Debbie’d sat back against the sofa cushions, curling up with her tea in her lap. _“He listened. And he cared about_ me _, for me. It was weird, at first, but we started hanging out together more and more and it just...happened. And he was so great with Sarah. So kind, really gentle, and you could tell he meant it._ _It showed me he wasn’t all that ‘devil may care’ stuff he pretended to be, and he was hurtin’, too, the family stuff...he missed his Mum, didn’t get on with Jack, if it wasn’t for Vic I don’t think he would have stuck around as long as he did._ ”

“ _ It was nice,”  _ she’d said, eventually _ , “to have someone who got what you were going through. He really cared about me and Sarah...he wanted us to be happy, away from the village, where we could start over together as our own family. _ ”

“ _S’like Robert, that,_ ” he’d replied, sliding sideways so that he was lying with his head in Debbie’s lap; she’d put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “ _Cares about everyone better than he cares about ‘imself._ _S’why he turned ‘imself in...to protect me ‘n Seb ‘n Vic, his family…_ ”

“ _ I know everyone thought he was a bad person,”  _ Debbie had said.  _ “I did, too, when all that mad stuff with Andy happened...and yeah, I might have hated him a bit for it. But I could see he really loved ya. You’d have to have been blind not to see it, actually, it was kind of gross. _ ” Debbie gave a small smile, which Aaron returned, knowing how much of a romantic softie Robert really was.  _ “I really am sorry for how it all turned out, and that I wasn’t there to help you through it. _ ”

“ _ I really miss him, _ ” Aaron had whispered, pressing his face into Debbie’s knees. She’d stroked her fingers through the mess of curls he called his hair and said quietly, sympathetically,  _ “I know you do. _ ”

Debbie, as it turned out,  _ did  _ know. Because when he’d finished crying, and was exhausted and still too drunk, she’d re-arranged him on the sofa and Uncle Zak had brought him a thick woollen blanket with a tartan pattern, worn and frayed at the edges, that smelled of Wishing Well and Aaron thought might have once been Lisa’s, and she’d perched on the arm of it and spoke so quietly Aaron half-thought he’d misheard her in his drained, alcohol-fuelled haze.

“ _I loved someone who went to prison once, too,_ ” she’d said. _“Her name was Jasmine. Sometimes I still miss her and I end up thinkin’ about what she’s doing, where she is. You don’t really get over it, but you eventually learn to get on without it and them, but that doesn’t mean that it was never important to start with._ _Remember what you had, yeah? Because that was real. What’s happenin’ now...it doesn’t matter if you hold onto that._ ”

_ “Deb? _ ” Aaron had mumbled, burrowing further under the blanket, letting the warmth envelope him completely. 

_ “Yeah? _ ” she’d asked.

_ “Thanks. _ ”

She’d nudged his shoulder affectionately.  _ “Anytime, cuz. _ ”

\- - - - - - -

On the fourth day, Robert was moved to a different ward, now considered to be out of critical care and able to be looked after by someone else in another part of the hospital. He was still being closely supervised, his mental state still precarious, and was having visits twice a day from Dr. Williams, who Aaron decided that he liked a lot.

He hadn’t mentioned wanting to die again. Aaron thought that was progress, but he knew that there was still a very long road ahead for his husband and although he was proud of him for sticking things out so far, pushing him too soon would only make him worse. 

After all, he knew that from experience, when his own family expected him to be magically okay after a few hugs and some ‘breathing space’. But it just didn’t work like that, however much you might want it to.

And God, did Aaron want it to. 

He wanted Robert to never have suffered, for none of this to ever have happened - not to him, not to  _ them _ , not after everything they’d been through. But neither of them could change the past now, and Robert needed him more than he ever had. If Aaron was honest, he needed him too, because without Robert in his life he felt like half a person. Whatever that relationship was - friends, boyfriends, fiances, husbands, they’d done it all - he craved it and  _ needed _ it, he needed it to feel whole. When half of himself was suffering, he suffered, too, a phantom pain that felt like emotional agony, crippling him from the inside. 

And in the last few days, he’d felt it more acutely than ever, Robert’s pain becoming his own as if they were one single person, fused together for all eternity.

\- - - - - - -

“You don’t have to keep coming here, you know,” Robert said. It had been Aaron’s second visit of the day, and he’d just risen to leave. “You can go home, go back to your life. You don’t have to worry about me, I’ll be fine with the doctors here.”

“No, no, I can’t do that,” he replied, shaking his head. “I can’t leave ya here like this, and I actually don’t want to either.”

Robert’s shoulders slumped. “I’m just a burden on you, Aaron. I always have been, to everyone in my life even when I loved them - I just end up hurting them and making them hate me. It’s the same every time, no matter what I try to do to stop it.” He stared at his hands, entwined in his lap. “You shouldn’t be around me, Aaron. No-one should. I can’t control who I am.”

“You think I hate you?” Aaron asked, wide-eyed. He couldn’t imagine anything farther from the truth. The mind, it played tricks on you, made you believe things that aren’t true, convinced you of things that had no evidence in reality. It could corrode your self-esteem and ruin who you were as an individual, tear you down and eat you up inside until there was nothing left. 

“You will,” he replied, his jaw set. He refused to look up at Aaron, his eyes fixed down on his lap. From this angle, Aaron could see the silhouette of the tube that fed into his nose, down to his stomach, giving him essential nutrients because his husband had been so depressed he’d refused to eat. “Everyone does in the end.” 

His gaze flicked up suddenly, eyes bright and shining. When he smiled then, it was a sad, dejected smile. A smile of resignation. “You don’t need to care about me anymore, you can let go of - this,” he waved a hand around himself, the hospital room, the cuff still chaining his right hand to the bedrail. “Forget about me. There’s no responsibilities left for you to do.”

_ Responsibilities _ . Robert thought he was a  _ responsibility _ , something that Aaron ‘had’ to do, like cleaning out the cupboard under the sink or filling out his tax returns. 

“That’s not true,” Aaron said, biting his lip to keep the lump in his throat from burning its way up. “Yeah, you’re my husband, and maybe that means that legally I have some kind of duty to care for you but - it’s not about that. I’m not doing it because I  _ have _ to. I’m doing it because I want to. Because I love you, more than anythin’ in this world -” He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut, trying to keep the tears at bay as he pinched two fingers to the bridge of his nose tight. “I never signed those stupid divorce papers. I threw them out. I ripped them into a million pieces and chucked them in the bin, because that’s how important I thought they were. That’s how important  _ we _ are to me, because - I love you,” he said. “And I know I keep saying it and I know it’s not enough for you to hear right now because of the mess your head is in but - I  _ love you. _ Only you, and it will always be only you. You got that?”

“The last person to love me like that was Mum,” Robert cried, chin wobbling like crazy. He tried to stem the flow of tears with the back of his hand, but it wasn’t enough. “And my dad and Andy killed her.”

“You miss her, still?” Aaron asked. Maybe he just hadn’t been paying attention, but he knew the loss of his mother affected Robert deeply to this day. Perhaps he hadn’t realized until now just how much.

“Every day,” he sniffed. “I think she’d be so disappointed in me.”

“I don’t,” Aaron protested. “I think she’d say you were brave, everythin’ you’ve been through...workin’ on yourself, trying to be a better person. She’d be proud. I know I am.”

“Stop it!” Robert cried again. “Stop it, stop it, I can’t - I can’t  _ handle _ it! I can’t handle  _ this _ !”

Aaron didn’t hesitate before he moved, throwing his arms around Robert’s thin shoulders and pulling him to his chest, cradling him as close to his body as he dared without hurting him. The familiar feel of it was almost overwhelming, a puzzle piece fitting back into its rightful place, the last piece that always ended up hiding under the sofa after spending hours searching for it. Aaron had searched, then tried to forget and let go of the incomplete puzzle - had even looked elsewhere for the same enjoyment and distraction - but in the end, he always came back to that jigsaw. 

And here he was. The missing piece. Fragile, shivering, sobbing into his chest, a little broken and battered round the edges, but here.  _ Alive _ . And back in Aaron’s arms where he belonged.

“Sh,” he tried to soothe him, pressing his cheek to the top of Robert’s head, his voice low and murmuring in his ear. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’ve got you, Rob. You don’t have to pretend you’re alright if you’re not. I’m here. I’ve got ya.”

“I don’t know how to let you help me,” Robert choked, his voice muffled by Aaron’s jumper. “I’ve never known how to let anyone help.”

“I’ll show you,” Aaron promised, rubbing wide circles on Robert’s back, the way he might for a distressed child. “If you let me, I’ll show you. It was in our weddin’ vows, right? In sickness and in health, isn’t that how it goes?”

“We were supposed to get divorced,” Robert replied. “You were meant to be set free.”

“Good job I’ve never listened to anythin’ you say then, isn’t it?” Aaron said, a wet laugh escaping his chest at his own little joke, despite everything. “And anyway, married, not married - it’s not important to me.  _ You _ are. We’ve done it before, haven’t we?”

Tentatively, Robert nodded against Aaron’s chest. His sobs were subsiding; he sniffed and gulped, chest heaving, trying to calm himself down a little. “Our first wedding. Best day of my life.”

Aaron took this sudden bait and grabbed it with both hands; “Yeah?”

Robert sniffed hard, nodded again. “Yeah.”

Something warm and heady spread through Aaron’s chest, lighting him up from the inside; his whole body felt alive with it. That feeling had been dormant for seven months, but was now rising again, filling him up and taking over his whole body. 

_ Home _ .

It was  _ home _ .

“Actually, I want to change what I said before, about not listenin’ to anythin’ you say,” Aaron said after a few beats of silence. “I did listen to one thing you said.”

“What?” Robert whispered, looking up at him with huge, earnest eyes, now with a glimmer of hope in them that hadn’t been there just a few days ago. 

“I never forgot how much you love me,” he said simply.

And then he hugged him tight again, warm bodies pressed together - though Robert still shivered with some cold, a side-effect of having lost so much weight in such a short space of time - and hearts beating almost in sync, breaths alternating in the little space that still existed between them. 

“I love you, too,” Robert mumbled, clinging to the front of Aaron’s jumper as if his life depended on it. Maybe it did.

And then, Aaron knew, that if this was going to be forever - if this was it, now, for good - and there was only one thing he had left to do.

\- - - - - - -

All the paperwork had been filed, Dr. Williams had argued her case, and Robert was being moved to an inpatient psychiatric facility in a few days’ time, to spend three months initially in treatment before being reviewed with the possibility of an extension.

Aaron couldn’t be happier, nor prouder, than that moment, knowing what Robert had been through not just in the last few days, but in those hellish seven months since they’d been apart.

Now things were moving forward. The past was repairing itself. Things were getting better, and there was hope. 

When Dr. Williams had first informed him of Robert’s diagnoses, his stomach had sank like a lead balloon, and he’d thought that they couldn’t possibly be able to help him with  _ all _ of them - and the guilt that it had got so bad for him, that he hadn’t even noticed, had eaten him up, leaving him staring wide-eyed at the ceiling of his hotel room all night, riddled with shame at having let Robert down so badly. 

“It’s a long-term process,” Dr. Williams said, putting a comforting hand on Aaron’s arm. “But we’ll get there. These are the crucial first steps your husband needs. After that, we can see where we go from here.”

He’d had a rather uncomfortable phone call with his Mum, her shrieking down the line at him for upping and leaving for the Isle of Wight so suddenly, acting all secretive and suspicious, only speaking to Cain and refusing to divulge any details to anyone else. 

“It’s private,” he’d snapped at her, eventually, hand gripping his phone so hard the knuckles almost turned white. “It’s between me and my  _ husband _ . So stop actin’ like you deserve to know everythin’ that’s goin’ on in my life, because you don’t and I won’t tell ya, either. Robert doesn’t need you bein’ a helicopter hoverin’ around every minute of every day waitin’ for him to screw up like you know what he’s goin’ through and neither do I.”

It had been refreshing, all in all, to tell his Mum where to go. He’d felt relieved. One less thing to worry about as they prepared to look forward to the future.

Cain had come through, too, and done what Aaron had asked him to. He’d never been more grateful for his uncle, having always been close but never having much of a touchy-feely relationship. Having both been through the wars lately, maybe that would change somewhat.

On the day that Robert was due to be moved, Aaron went for one last visit before he left to go back to Emmerdale. He hated having to leave, but with the new preparations in place, he felt better about it than he would have done otherwise.

“Hey, you,” he said, sitting down in the customary plastic chair that had become his own over the last week or so. “How d’you feel today?”

“Tired. Scared,” Robert admitted. “I don’t want to be seen as the prison freak who couldn’t hack it inside so now he gets special treatment.”

“Don’t,” Aaron chastised, taking his hand and rubbing his thumb over the back of it gently. “It’s a good thing, yeah? Nobody else matters ‘xcept you and how  _ you’re _ doin’, okay?”

“What if I don’t get any better? What if I can’t?” he asked, the fear in his voice obvious. “What if I’m stuck like this and you - you end up carin’ for me for the rest of my life?”

“Then I’ll do it,” Aaron said with a shrug, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It was. “I meant it, I’m here for you for the long haul, whatever happens. You’ve got me for the next fourteen years and beyond, I  _ promise _ ya.”

“And if it gets too much?” Robert asked. 

Aaron just smiled. “Then we’ll talk to each other, and figure it out together, yeah? Like what you once said. You and me against the world.”

“Yeah, but I was totally bladdered then, wasn’t I?” Robert scoffed. “I’m never drinking whiskey again.”

“Doesn’t make it not true,” Aaron interjected. “And to prove it to you, I brought you these, had Cain send them up for me.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small slate-grey box, holding it out in his palm. “I spoke to the nurse and your doctors, they said it was okay for you to have them-”

He opened the box, his hands shaking, and revealed two shining silver rings, nestled together side by side. His and Robert’s, kept safe all this time. “You don’t have to put it on right now or anythin’, you don’t even have to put it on at all if you’re not ready, but when you feel up to it - if you want to -” He could feel his throat becoming thick with tears again, his words falling over each other. “You can have yours. To remind ya of me and - that I’m not giving up on ya. Or us. Not now, not ever. Is that okay?”

Robert reached out tentatively and pulled one of the rings free; he held it between his fingers, turning it this way and that, the metal catching the light and gleaming. “Thank you. I love you so much, Aaron.”

“And I love you, too,” Aaron said back. He couldn’t hide his spreading smile this time as he snapped the box shut, and put it back in his pocket, a kind of euphoria spreading through him, a lightness that hadn’t been there just months ago. Robert squeezed his ring tight in his closed palm, holding it close to his chest like it was something infinitely more precious than a circle of hammered metal. He knew how he felt. 

“Aaron?” Robert asked hesitantly. His jaw worked, the way it did when he was nervous or thinking about something too much.

“Yeah?” he said earnestly in reply. 

“Kiss me,” he said, his voice breathless, the words coming out in a rush. Pink spots bloomed on his cheeks; he was blushing, and the colour brought a whole new warmth to his otherwise pale, pinched face, hollowed out with all his suffering and pain. “Please, please just kiss me.”

Aaron lunged forwards without a second thought; he pressed his mouth to Robert’s and captured his lips in a searing kiss, trying to put all of his thoughts and feelings and emotions into that one hungry, desperate action. Robert’s lips were warm, still soft if a little chapped around the edges, and both their faces became wet with their own silent tears as Aaron cupped the back of Robert’s head to keep him at the right angle, Robert’s hand not holding the ring coming up to cradle Aaron’s cheek, thumb resting just under his jawline, his palm spread wide and hot on his neck and so familiar it was as if they’d been hurtled back in time, to the way things were before all of this. They kissed and kissed, gasping for breaths in the space between them, neither wanting to be the first to pull away. It felt like minutes, or hours; the space around them, Robert’s hospital room and the beeping machines, fell away as if they didn’t matter or had simply gone unnoticed by them both. 

Eventually, Robert pulled away and wrapped his arms around Aaron’s neck, pressing his face into his shoulder as if he wanted to inhale everything that he was - everything about this moment, right now, the start of a new chapter and a new future. It was uncertain, definitely, but anything that was difficult was. 

“Thanks for not giving up on me,” he murmured into Aaron’s neck, squeezing him ever tighter. 

Aaron bent his head, pressed a quick kiss to Robert’s temple. “Never.”

“I love you, you know?” Robert said, turning to rest his cheek against Aaron’s chest, right over his heart. “Always.”

Aaron smiled, stroking his fingers through Robert’s unkempt hair. “I know.” Then he added, “Always.”

Maybe there would be hard times ahead. In fact, Aaron knew that there would be. But that didn’t mean that the good times weren’t good, or that the bad things made the good things unimportant and insignificant. It didn’t matter, really, in the end, because they had each other. For now and forever.

  
  


_ Come what may. _

  
  


They’d be ready for it.

  
  


_ Together.  _

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to give a huge show of appreciation for softlass27 and robandaaronsoulmates for their unwavering support, cheerleading and words of encouragement and wisdom, even though they probably hate me now for now angsty this actually turned out!
> 
> Please give me a shout on Tumblr @robertssvgden if you liked the fic, I really hope you did :)


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